It’s time for a yearly tradition here at MBIP. It’s the time to get the yearly, pre-holiday tattoo! This all started back in December of 2015 when I decided to go to Wanda’s I’m No Angel Tattoo on Farmington Road and get MBIP tattooed on my arm. That was the fifth tattoo and it started what’s become yet another tradition here on MBIP. In addition to the MBIP tattoo, the following year I got 1967, which was one of my favorite years and then the next year I got a 1976 tattoo which was another landmark year for me.

This year I’m going to go with three letters and a star at the end of it and it will all be explained as you keep on scrolling, scrolling, scrolling!

Here we are at Wanda’s I’m No Angel Tattoos on Farmington Road. And that’s Wanda Harper, the owner and tattoo artist at I’m No Angel Tattoos. Wanda was the first female tattoo artist in Peoria (and just one of four in the country back then) and through the years she’s turned this into Peoria’s best known and most respected tattoo parlor. She’s won awards and gotten international press for her work and her large client base. You can read more about her tattoo work here at her website and she’s also involved in another locally owned business. In addition to tattoos, Wanda has a dog training business called Wanda’s Sunka K9 Training. You can see more about this on her website and see videos on her facecrack page.

There’s Wanda getting ready to print out the stencil for this year’s tattoo at her computer.

And this fellow completes the picture, pun fully intended because this is Matt Buedel, the official photographer for this yearly event. Matt is a writer and a professional photographer and you can see some of his work and read about him by clicking right here. That’s Matt displaying the universal hand camera symbol in the bottom photo and from here on in all the photos are by Matt. And I have to give him extra thanks because while he has some fancy-ass cameras, I always force him to use the shitty MBIP Camera that I bought at Best Buy on sale about six years ago. Take it away Matt!

Here we are checking out the size of the stencil. This year’s tattoo is the letters, “TMM” with a star at the end and I’ll explain that at the bottom of this post. Keep on scrolling!

Okay, time to take our places and let the ink start flowing from the electric needle right on to my right forearm!

The first step is to transfer the stencil onto my arm.

It’s in place, time to start putting the ink on for the eighth tattoo!

There’s Wanda starting the procedure off with Matt snapping away. Wanda’s a real pro and it’s as painless as a tattoo can be.

It’s always a lot of fun because the three of us have a nice conversation and kind of re-cap the whole year. It’s usually about a 45 minute process.

And there we have it, the eighth tattoo! Thanks to Wanda for another great tattoo and to Matt for the fabulous photography! Now you can read what the hell this tattoo is all about!

Behind The Eighth Tattoo

Everyone of these tattoos has a story behind them and this one is no exception to the rule. The tattoo stands for The Marty Monologues and there’s a star at the end of it, because—and this sounds funny to say—but, I’m the star of the show!

I feel lucky at this point in my life to have found a totally new art form that I think I can be good at. The first show went extremely well. I was scared shitless to do it, but everyone seemed to really enjoy it and I was told I put on a good show. Of course I had help, Chelsie Tamms did all the fabulous artwork and the logo, Sarah Marie Dillard and Brandon Mooberry did a great job with the opening and closing songs, Jonathan Wright A.K.A. DJ juanGoblin was a wonderful DJ and my friends Amber and Joe Bohannan helped me on a variety of levels from being my test audience to selling tickets and watching the door the night of the show. If you missed all of this here’s a link to a blog about the show.

The first show went so well it was like a dream come true and quite frankly it seems that way because I was so scared and psyched out, I really don’t remember much of it, but afterwards it was a real high! So I’m working on a brand new one that we’re going to do in April and I’m going to do it in Peoria, Chicago and New York City. I think this will tell me if this is something I can keep working on or if the first one was a fluke. I’m really excited and still scared about this whole project and it’s cool to have found something like this at my age!

I want to thank everyone who came to the first show, those who worked with me on it and I’m saving the last thanks for my friend Clare Koeppel who really pushed me to do this. She had confidence me before I ever thought I could pull this off, so thanks to you, Clare!

Now it’s onto the next show, I’ve got the tattoo so it’s time to own this idea and make it happen!